Episode 52: Cut-to-Length and Tethered Assist Systems (in English)

Episode 52 - Tethered & Cut-to-Length Systems -Transcripts

Ai Generated Transcripts edited by Carrie Cantrell for accuracy, grammar, and syntax.

Introduction to In the Woods Podcast

Lauren Grand: From the Oregon State University's Extension Service, you are listening to In the Woods with the Forestry and Natural Resources Program. This podcast brings the forest to listeners by sharing the stories and voices of forest scientists, land managers, and enthusiastic members of the public. Each episode, we will bring you research and science-based information that aims to offer some insight into what we know and are still learning about forest science and management. Stick around to discover a new topic related to forests on each episode.

Meet Our Guest: Matt Mattiota

Jacob Putney: All right. Welcome back everyone to In the Woods podcast presented by the Forestry and Natural Resource Extension Program at Oregon State University. I'm Jacob Putney, Extension Agent in Baker and Grant Counties and your host for today's episode. I'm excited to be joined by Matt Mattiota, an Oregon State graduate holding a bachelor's degree in forest management. Matt is the Senior Vice President of Cut-to-length Systems and Chief Forester from Miller Timber Services. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Matt Mattiota: Thanks, Jacob.

Jacob Putney: I want to give you a chance to tell us a little bit about yourself. So why don't you give us a little background and your work with, uh, timber services?

Matt's Journey in Forestry

Matt Mattiota: Yeah. I graduated in 1995 in forest management. During my time in college and then after that I worked for a company called Willamette Industries over here in the Willamette Valley. I was a forester for them working about eight years for them in reforestation and I did get involved in commercial thinning early in that career. I took a little time off from forestry, got into the family construction business and then decided I really missed forestry. And so, I came over here to the Valley in May of 2010. I was hired on and been here ever since. When I started working, we had two cut-to-length sides or four machines. This business has changed. We've grown a lot. Our footprints changed. We're currently over, over 50 cut-to-length machines scattered here in the Pacific Northwest I've got a great team of folks, most of which are Oregon state grads that are helping run stuff. Although I would say we've got a, we've got a Humboldt state, a Colorado state and a Georgia forester grad now in, in the management team, helping run these operations. So, it's great to get different perspectives from different collegiate backgrounds. Cause we've got people with different skillsets and that's an important part of building a good team is getting people to have different skillsets and maybe some different life experiences that help add to the richness in our offerings to people. Like one person working for us, she was a graduate of Humboldt State, but she doesn't have a forestry degree. She has an ecology background. And so, we have projects that are restoration oriented that are more than just trees sometimes, Megan gets to work on those because she brings a different perspective to the table to help us work with our clients.

Jacob Putney: No, I think that's great.

Innovative Harvesting Technology: Cut-to-length Systems

Jacob Putney: So, we mentioned it already, but today we're going to be talking about some innovative harvesting technology including cut-to-length systems, as well as some tethered assist systems. So, to kick us off, why don't we start with cut to length? So, what exactly does a cut-to-length system look like and what does that mean?

Matt Mattiota: Yeah. So cut-to-length is a harvesting methodology. It's come from Finland, so the Scandinavian countries were really developed it. And so, what it really means is you have a harvester two machines make up an operation. Okay. Anymore. They are all rubber tire machines that early in back from the day, there was track machines for harvester rubber tires for affordable, everything is now rubber tire, and everything is migrated from six wheel to eight-wheel machines, and we'll get into why that matters. So, eight-wheel machines light on the land and they have 32 feet of reach. And so, they can reach out and literally grab the tree that they want to cut it, put it on the ground, pull it back toward the base machine. And then the computer systems on that machine will then pull the tree through the harvesting head.

As it's pulling it through, it is measuring it and taking diameter readings every centimeter of length. It is measuring both length and diameter, and we program it with value matrices. And the machine will pause, and we will buck logs out of it. Okay. To get the best value we can out of that stem and then the slash and limbs from that tree will be placed in front of the machine.

We will walk on it for soil protection and nutrient recycling in the sand logs we place off to the side and then the forwarder will come back by pick up the logs, put it on. The back of the forwarder, which kind of looks like a, for those of you haven't seen it, think of like an off-highway kind of truck kind of, kind of program.

And so, it will pack wood then to the roadside, and then it'll unload that wood off the roadside. And then we'll either use that machine to load trucks, or we'll use a separate loading piece of equipment to load trucks. But basically, two people make up the entire operation. They're very efficient at thinning and small diameter trees, although they're used around the world for a lot of final harvesting as well.

In fact, the latest numbers I have seen is well over 50 percent of all wood harvested in the world now is with cut-to-length equipment. We don't see a ton of it here in North America, although its presence is growing. The greatest concentration of these machines you'll find will be in the lake states.

But super-efficient at harvesting, light on the land, low environmental footprint. Checks a lot of boxes there, so that's why these are very popular systems.

Jacob Putney: Wow. 50 percent really over 50%. Wow. No kidding. I had no idea. It was that high already.

Matt Mattiota: Yeah, it's the last numbers I heard were somewhere 55 percent plus now every year it grows by a couple percent and it's growing at the expense of whole tree systems.

And they'll tell you about the greatest holdout for whole tree systems is here in North America.

Jacob Putney: No kidding.

Understanding Tethered Assist Systems

Jacob Putney: So, let's kind of dive into tethered systems then. So, they can go hand in hand, but there are some differences there. So, what about, like, what does tethered mean and what does that allow your operators to do with these different types of equipment?

Matt Mattiota: Yeah. So tethering is kind of a broad name for a cable assist system, which allows machines to get on steeper slope than normally they would operate on because the cable gives them in our case, traction, it's a traction aid, but in the case of other types of machines, it's a traction and stability aid. This is where it gets back into this eight-wheel concept I talked about earlier. So, eight-wheel machines with four bogeys, so each bogey has two wheels on it and they kind of operate independently and the machine articulates in the center and rotates. So, it's the machine conforms to the land. That's why we only need it for winch assist is for just strictly traction aid and not stability because we have a low center of gravity and a large footprint. If we had a, if we had a track machine, it has a small footprint and a high center of gravity, they would need it for stability. Not only traction aid, but also stability because of high center of gravity. So, we use it strictly for a traction aid. Our system is different in that it is built on a machine. And so, the cable comes out of the machine. We tie off onto a stump, or if we don't have anything, we could. Put a dozer or something and then it is synchronized with the drive system of the machine. So, the operator tells machine they want to go forward. The winch computer talks with the drive computer to maintain a tension on that line and then lets the winch cable out to go down the hill and then pulls it back in when they go up the hill. It is what they call a static line system. So, think of like a spider descending from the ceiling of the house, the spider descends, but it keeps the web keeps growing from the spider.

That's kind of how this would work versus a separate system used for the track machines, which we don't do that kind of work. That would be a separate, which base machine somewhere, and then a running line or a line would come out of that machine tied to the other machine going down over the hill. So that cable will be moving across the ground. Ours is the opposite of that. It comes out of the base machine. We don't need a secondary machine, and it goes where we need to go. One of the advantages of A static line system for us is we don't have to get the base machine up to a location to tether.

So, when we go through a standard timber and the ground transitions from ground, we can normally operate on with. Out of which to where we need a winch, we will just hook up where we need it and use it from there forward. We don't have to have a base machine up on the road or somewhere that cable is going to start at also being a static line. If you're in a sitting situation like forest restoration work. That cable is not moving going to be damaging other trees in the stand. It's static. It doesn't really move. So, it provides us with the opportunity to put a block in there or a pivot point, which we can turn when we go down the hill to treat complex hill slopes. We use this quite a bit in some of the work we do. We do a lot of work for ski areas and thinning the trees in between the ski runs. And this comes in particularly handy in those challenging, challenging environments where you have a lot of infrastructure that you don't want to damage, mainly being a ski lift.

Operational Advantages and Safety

Jacob Putney: You mentioned a bunch of them already, but in both kind of a tethered and untethered assist scenario for these cut-to-length systems, you know, what are some of the advantages in terms of operational feasibility, safety, efficiency, and things like that?

Matt Mattiota: Yeah. So, normally now it's all soil dependent. These machines with eight wheels and tracks on it, the way they conform to land, we're going to We can operate on ground 50, 55 percent slope without the winch. We use it. We'll start thinking about hooking up at 45 percent and above just to make sure we have confidence we can go into an area and get out without disturbing the ground. So, there's a great advantage in that sense. It also provides extra security in terms of safety. That way we know we can get out of a place and not have to worry about. Operators getting themselves in a situation, which would be undesirable. They're getting stuck. And how do I get out? So, the winch helps us a bunch in that regard because it is strictly for us a traction aid. We don't need it for the stability. Although the machines are fully fall-protection certified. These are put on the factory over in Finland and so they're engineered for the base machine and that, that's a great feature.

Jacob Putney: You mentioned that you only need two operators to run, these two machines. I imagine that it makes it easier when there's some workforce challenges, I bet.

Matt Mattiota: That's a great point. It does. So instead of having a separate person to run a cutting machine, a skidding machine, a processing machine, a loading machine, we just have two. And so, from an operational perspective, we have two employees and because the systems can operate a little bit independently, right? The harvester gets ahead of that forwarder with process logs or vice versa. If we have a machine breakdown. The other part of the system can usually keep running versus if we had separate machines, the possibility that you didn't have a way to skid logs and there'd be nothing for a processor on the landing to do. So, somebody can be gone, or we can have a machine down and usually keep that system moving. So, it is helpful. It is also very different than other traditional systems, let's say with a Feller Buncher, a skidder, A processor and a loader in that these machines are they're smaller, they're lighter weight on a whole than like a buncher would be. And they are all about finesse and not about brute strength. It's a totally different approach to how you go about your work. They're very technology oriented and heavy to tech and. They're actually very attractive to younger people to operate. And in particular, we heard this from the Germans because they got a lot of these in Germany and a lot of women actually enjoy working on this type of equipment because it's a different mentality that goes with it. And we've had several female operators over the years and a couple more foresters. And it went on to, after they ran machines to be foresters for their companies and they've enjoyed it, and we've enjoyed it with them. And I think it's a great way for us in the industry to open up the pool of available operators to a bunch of people that normally wouldn't ever think about working in the woods.

Jacob Putney: And that's interesting how that dynamic has changed with this technology. Thinking about steep slopes too and compared to like a skyline system and the amount of time that, that takes to set up and the amount of folks that you need to set those up, running a haywire across drainage to set up, bringing the skyline up, et cetera.

Matt Mattiota: Yes. And so, the other thing we could talk about there is if you had a skyline system, the safety is we don't have boots on the ground, right? So, we don't have cutters out there cutting trees by hand. In a thinning scenario, the machines can do up to trees 28 inches on the butt, so we can cover most everything we need to cover in a thinning situation. Nobody's on the ground, so it's a much safer environment in that cab. If trees were to hit that cab, and I've Seen it happen before it smashed the light bar and that's about it. Versus if somebody was on the ground, they'd be in trouble or, twisting ankles or getting hurt from falling debris or running or lines breaking and bees, in the summertime, poison oak. Snakes and all the fun stuff out there. That's trying to get you in, you know, at least you're in the cab and you're nice, air-conditioned cab with your heated and air-conditioned seat. If you want it to be hot or cold, there's a cooler in there to keep your lunch cold for you. And there's a food heater in his machine to heat your lunch up for you. I mean, it's, you got your Bluetooth going on. So, it's a great, it's a great working environment. And. In terms of, on the tethered if we were to not have this and we were to be in a cable system, you're limited to the hours of daylight when you can operate and in the middle of summer, when fire danger is really high, a lot of times you can't operate. Because these machines have fantastic lights, we can tether. Sometimes when the fire danger is bad, we'll go out at two in the morning and start working because we have great lights and we can work and we can get a lot of that work done before the peak of the heat in the day so we can still continue to get the work done on the landscape with minimizing the risks or in some cases when Fire restrictions are great. You can't operate a cable system, but with the static line, it's a, the lines are moving on the ground. So, the fire risk is very low. And especially with, harvesters have bar saws, not hot saws. So, the potential for them to start a fire from a saw itself is actually very low.

Challenges and Adoption in North America

Jacob Putney: So, you mentioned that North America is the holdouts, so to speak, from adopting some of this technology and these kinds of systems. Do you have an idea why that might be, or some of the challenges this technology might face?

Matt Mattiota: Couple reasons. That's a great question. I'd say one reason is Scribner, you know, how we measure log volume, especially in the Western side of the Oregon, Washington. And it's long, they want long logs because of Scribner and the rules that Scribner, how Scribner volume is measured. That's a big problem. Other parts of the world, it's all cubic volume basis and the cubic volume is what it is, right? There's no scaling rules where you take the small end of a log and anything outside of it is basically not counted for in the volume and free wood, essentially, although they'll tell you no, we count that it's like, well, but you look at the table and how the table works. It's not accounted for. So, the longer the log, and there's more of that volume outside of that scaling cylinder, but if it's on a cubic basis, it doesn't really matter. So that's, I say, that's 1 thing. Another reason is. People buy, you know, equipment wise, what they're used to and what they're used to doing and how they're used to doing it. This is a totally different shift in mentality, how you go about your work. And so, there's probably, I think there's some reluctance there from some folks. It's like, well, I know what works for me, so I'm just going to keep doing this. And you got to change how you're geared up too, because cut-to-length logs are short, shorter logs, right? Versus a long log system. And so maybe their trucks are configured for long logs and not short logs. And maybe the mill likes that versus the short logs. And so, it's a, there's cultural reasons why we haven't gone this way. And in the case of final harvesting in Western Oregon sometimes it's tree size, three to 20 inches on the butt. There's a lot of trees on a bigger than that out there. And there's gonna be reasons for, staying with a different system because of the strictly the size of the trees. So, there's several reasons why, but it's changing.

Jacob Putney: Yeah. Do you see a shift towards cubic foot volume? Because that's a big one over here.

Matt Mattiota: A lot of discussion, right? It's a lot of discussion. And I think it comes down to everybody. If you're a mill, everybody's afraid to be the first one to go out there and change how they purchase, because they feel they'll be at a disadvantage from somebody else. Cause the public can't understand how that works. Although it's interesting. A lot of folks actually look at things internally and cubic meters, even I found out, which is how we think. We talk internally cubic meters. That's how these machines base thinking is, it's metric. And so, we entertain folks from around the world that come over in our industry for tours and we go around the world and visit other people. And it's great because we can talk the same language, cubic meters or cubic meters. It doesn't matter where you're at, our operations in the U. S. South, they're measuring systems down there are completely different than here in Western Oregon versus Eastern Oregon because of the scaling rules. California operations are different too because of that, but a cubic basis is kind of like a normalizer. It's all the same. It doesn't matter where you're at. So, if it's cubic feet, cubic meters, either way, works really well. You basically get what you paid for. Tons... I think that transition starts with tons, right? People kind of get used to tons. And quit, especially in younger wood that doesn't have defect, there's not grade in it, there's not a lot of value. You move to a ton basis and move from tons to cubic meters, it's pretty simple. And then you take out the seasonality, the weight changes in trees. You know, spring versus fall, when there's moisture in the ground, I'm not, I mean, that goes away with a cubic basis.

Jacob Putney: Yeah, no, that'd be my first thought when you mentioned tons is how does the moisture affect that? And seasonality.

Matt Mattiota: A lot. And how long does that would sit somewhere before it gets the final destination, the time of year, the species, how much heartwood, how much sap put on a tree, it changes a lot. And so, we do keep track of that. We keep track of ratios. So, like I said, we think in terms of cubic meters and that gives us production and we follow all the way through the system, harvester does it, how much cubic meters every picked up by a forward or how many truckloads is adequate to, we follow that through the system. It gives us a yardstick to measure by.

Diverse Projects and Applications

Jacob Putney: So, I want to talk about some of the areas that you work in and some of the projects you've done. You mentioned ski runs, but you know, which kind of force types and different terrains, and regions that you work in if you have anything specific?

Matt Mattiota: here in Western Oregon Western Oregon, Western Washington, parts of Northern California, we can break our work into areas where we're doing, commercial thinning for an industrial basis for the purpose of wood production. Right? Thinning young plantations to get them to a point at which they're going to produce high quality wood, lots of volume per acre at rotation. So that is one aspect of what we do. We get into other programs, forest restoration work, Eastern Oregon, some parts of California, the Colorado Rockies, all through that intermountain region, where if we're working for Government agencies NGOs, we're doing thinning work based on forest health. We're trying to restore some kind of forest health to these stands. And we're into the second full year now of a many-year project with the Boy Scouts of America on the Boy Scouts Scout Ranch in Philmont. It's called Philmont. It's in New Mexico, huge, huge place, tens of thousands of acres is this property. And so, we're thinning on their property for them, not for the purpose of timber production, but for the purpose of forest health. And so, they want to keep those forests healthy so they don't burn down because if those forests burn down, we have catastrophic wildfire, it really doesn't help the Boy Scouts with that ranch's mission in providing an outdoor experience. For all the scouts that go down there. So, to keep that forest healthy has a totally different value to them. It's a scenic and a recreational value. So, wood that comes out of there, yes, we're bringing saw logs, we're bringing lots of stuff that's not saw-logs, but that's not the driver for that kind of thing. Conversely, we're doing a project, In Redwood National Park, Redwood Rising, this is three years into that project and it's, it's thinning young stands in Redwood National Park for the Save the Redwoods League and Redwood National Park Service National Park Service, for the purpose of restoring health to some of these young stands that were second growth stands to help those stands. take on old growth characteristics earlier and to keep them healthy so that they won't also suffer, bugs or catastrophic wildfire. In places in Colorado, we're doing work thinning stands and removing dead and dying or just thinning stands. For the purpose of protecting water quality. So, Colorado has 5 million people in the front range of Colorado. All that water comes out of the Rockies and then of course, Arizona and New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Southern California get their water out of Colorado as well. A lot of people need water out of the Colorado river system and protecting the forest and environment where that water originates. So, it doesn't suffer catastrophic wildfire. And then subsequently. Debris torrents the risks to public health and safety and actually changes the, changing the water quality after those events to a negative effect, which sometimes can make, render that water not as even useful for municipalities is super important for them, right? So, in those situations, yes, it's a forest health. Restoration project, but the main driver there is actually improving water quality habit water quality, and we've done projects there for municipalities for watershed collaboratives for state agencies, federal agencies, private landowners, and it's all about enhancing and improving the water quality and actually by thinning these stands, we're increasing them. Not only the quality, but the quantity of water that some of these forest environments are producing by removing a lot of trees off the landscape, letting more snow hit the ground, let more snow and precipitation actually infiltrate the ground and become groundwater and eventually feed those. Rivers and streams in the Rockies. So totally different reason there. Move to the U. S. South, our operations down there. Those at this point are primarily industrial. We're not thinning there. Most of that is final harvest. And so, opportunities we provide there is the traditional systems they use in the South can't do slopes over about 20%. That's, we don't even think about tethering. So, we can get on slopes that they can't get. And also, we are working in environments where the ground is really soft in places, and there maybe is even, there's even standing water, and the machines have such a light footprint, we can operate in those environments, harvest trees. And get wood out of those stands that normally wouldn't be able to be reached most of the year. We can open that extend open that operating window. Plus, the systems in the U. S. South historically not been systems where they merchandise logs to lengths and diameters based on value. They tend to They're short rotations and they tend to take most of the tree, and they also see their tree good enough to go to a solid module tree that's going to pull. In the cut-to-length system, we can take trees that might go to pull and using the computer and AI and the computer and how we're learning how these trees work, we can slice and dice these trees up and actually drive value out of stems that maybe didn't have. So that's a huge change from traditional operations in the South. So, when you look across the United States and the environments, we operate in very different conditions, not to mention like this time of year, where we got a lot of fire on the landscape and these machines are very active in Going out and fire suppression efforts and building containment lines. We have 2640-gallon water tanks that go in the back of our forwarders, which basically make these things off road fire trucks, the forwarders, and we can go bring the fire, bring the water to the fire and go fight those directly. Lots of things we do with these machines. I call it our Finnish army knife because we can do so many different things with them. So, depending on where we're at, who we're working for, we kind of change our approach to what we do and how we do it.

Jacob Putney: No, it sounds like an incredible amount of diversity, not only in the areas you cover, but just the different types of projects that you have going on from firefighting to restoration to the Boy Scouts. I haven't been to Philmont, but I imagine like working around all of that infrastructure there and trails and things like that too has to be a challenge and the ski areas too, obviously with that infrastructure.

Matt Mattiota: Ski areas are obviously not flat and, uh, there's lots of, there's lots of challenges with that. Places where, normally we think people think of harvesting and like, Oh, the roads right there. We just load, load logs on the road. Well, ski areas, you just don't have road networks in them that are conducive to log trucks. So, this is, I don't know, year five or six, something like that over at Sun Valley, Idaho, and, not a good road network for log trucks to get the product offsite. So, we have separate forwarders in their job after their logs are hauled up on the cable with all the cable on the tether assist to get to where the machines are is another forwarder is picking those logs up and then driving them two miles to where we can actually load them out on a truck.

Jacob Putney: Oh, wow.

Matt Mattiota: So, we don't have to. And we've done this in Colorado too, where we don't have to build a big road network where other systems would need to access these areas to get the landscape treated. So, it's good in that approach where we don't have to be as intensive with roading an area to get the work done.

Future of Forestry Technology

Jacob Putney: Could you tell us a little bit more about the exciting technology that these machines currently have and how you see them changing over time?

Matt Mattiota: Yeah, so I mentioned briefly a little bit about, they do have some AI built into the harvester. And so, what I mean by that is it learns as we move across the landscape, it learns the form class or, how these trees taper on the landscape. And so, it does a lot of projections forward of what it thinks it can get out of trees. Versus not actually waiting to measure it, but it learns how these trees by species change over time. So, we can move around the landscape and it'll, after we feed the first three feet to that harvesting head at the rate of about 16 feet a second, when they're off small diameter, the small end, when they're really cranked up, it's about 16 feet a second. Now that doesn't always move that fast, the bigger trees, but it can move quick. So, I mentioned earlier, every centimeter of length has taken diameter reading, right? So, it's keeping in its system, all the data from all the trees harvested out there. Every centimeter length has a diameter associated with it by species. So, the AI goes and starts looking at this database and starts projecting based on other things it's seen that are similar, what that tree will look like and what it can get out of it. And so, it starts proposing solutions as it's feeding. And then as we approach those points, it’s flashing on the screen very quickly. It's either confirming or denying that that's the best choice. And so, the operators can confirm or deny it. It can't see defect like a tree split or it's forked, or it's broken. It can't see that yet. There are some early systems that they're working on. We'll have some machine vision and machine learning that can start identifying these things to help us as the operator in that. And so, the machine will keep going. So that technology is going to be changing with. Some machine vision. Also, it's going to be changing, looking at, where the harvester head is in relationship to the base machine. So, it's keeping, it's already kind of keeping track of the landscape, where the base machine is, where it's cutting trees on the landscape, but it's going to get better where it'll know where it's at in the landscape, so that we know where, well, here's a protected resource area. The harvester head is, are you in it? Are you out of it? And so, it can give alerts and not let it do things. Basic level there. But as it's feeding logs out, these machines are gonna start learning to talk to each other over time. So, the forwarder that picks up the logs will know where the logs are in the landscape to go get them. I would envision the forwarder, forwarder starting out being able to semi-autonomous functions, maybe unload themselves to first. Unload logs, most of them are 22-ton capacity machines. So that means they can carry 22 tons of logs on your back. We're still in less than 10 PSI ground pressure, which is really low, but when compared to skidders are higher than that, mountain bikes are higher than that on ground pressure. These are really low ground pressure machines. So, a machine that maybe kind of load itself at some point in time, maybe over time, they can figure out how to go out there and get these things itself. We'll see as this technology evolves, farming has a lot of things that can do stuff like this already, but a forest environment is much more complex than a farm field. So, we'll see how this technology evolves. A year ago. In April, I was in Finland at the factory, in a little town called Vierma. And I sat in the first prototype of a hybrid Ford. And what I mean by hybrid, it's like a hybrid car or pickup truck. It runs on electric, but it's got a smaller diesel engine that starts up to charge the batteries and the batteries get low. It's super quiet and quite a bit more fuel efficient than even a normal cut length forward, which-- by the way cut length harvesting systems only over 50 percent of the world. What is now harvested by that? What I am told, is, and there's some studies going on right now to looking at this even closer. The lowest carbon footprint of any mechanized harvesting system out there. So, I see that. Even getting better with time and lowering our overall impacts. And so, these systems, they come from Europe and fuel is very expensive there. So, anything they can do to reduce the amount of fuel they consume, to reduce that impact, they do it. And there's a big push by a lot of companies that are saying, Hey, what? What can we do to reduce that fuel consumption to reduce our emissions? We're going to see electrification companies’ machines, we’ll start seeing these things start hitting actual serial production, and we'll get them in the woods, and we'll put in the work and see how they work. So, I'm excited to watch this technology evolve.

Jacob Putney: I'm always fascinated the amount of data that these machines are capable of collecting and just the potential for incorporating those and improving growth and yield models. There's the, just the amount of uses that that data could be used for, and this, the precision of these machines and how that's just evolved over time.

Matt Mattiota: Yeah, that's incredible. I mean, you look here and if you cut through a mill in the Northwest, it might be, at best. The extra trim over final board length, right? So, let's say a 16-foot board is what they're trying to make out of a log. They'll say, hey, I need six inches of trim. So, you cut the log 16 foot, six inches. Sometimes you'll see nine inches off foot, depending on who you're dealing with and what mill been over to Finland multiple times and visit some mills around the world, and talk to them and go, how much extra trim you put on these logs over final board length? They go, Oh, three centimeters, three centimeters of trim. Because it costs them a lot of money. Right, to have that extra trim, right? They want to be very precise about what they're doing, not waste much. And that extra trim changes the cutting the board pattern off the next log, what that looks like. And instead of going, instead of that volume and a trim going out as boards, it's going out as chips, right? And so, boards are worth more than chips. So, they're like, hey, if we minimize the amount of chips instead of boards, we can get more VA value outta that stem. So, we do have a client. In the U. S. South that we are working with that is we are getting to that level of precision with our trim lights on logs for that very reason as well. And I tell you, if it wasn't for digital calipers and doing this by species, it's a hard thing to do, but it's totally doable. And so, it's a mind shift for us. About how we go about our work and what's acceptable. And so, we get fantastic graphs back from them of what our targets are, what they want to be. And then, the bell-shaped curve and how we're doing it, hitting those targets, but we're learning a lot and we're getting there. So, it's possible. It is possible to do it, but because, traditionally there's been so much wood available here. We haven't, as an industry haven't had to be that precise, but the reality is we're in a global marketplace, right? And so wooden and Northwest here has got to compete, not only the wooden South, but we've got to compete with wood from Europe, from South America. I mean, it's coming into our marketplace. We got to get better at what we do. We got to be more efficient about what we do. And so, we have to move this way. I was in Chicago last summer with my son and we were out there on a field trip looking at some stuff. And I wandered into a Menards, never been in a Menards. Being the nerd kind of guy I am, went in there and looked at the wood. And there were units after unit of two by fours and two by six from Europe in the Menards. I go, how can that be? How can wood from Europe get produced- and they don't pay people pennies over there. They pay people pretty well. It's a pretty costly environment to work in- produce that lumber, package it, put it on a ship, get it over here, get it to Menards over in Chicago, and out compete wood from not only the South, but also the Northwest or Canada, coming into that marketplace. How do they do that? they're super-efficient. They're just very efficient at what we do, at [what] they do. So, we have to change our mindset in terms of efficiency. And what does really efficiency look like?

Jacob Putney: Well, I know we could probably talk about this technology for far longer, but I think we're nearing the end here, but I want to make sure that you get a chance if you have any parting thoughts on this technology or tethered assist systems or some of the work or projects that you're involved in.

Matt Mattiota: Yeah, you know, I think Cut-to-length technology is very different to what we've seen here historically in, forest harvesting systems in the United States. It looks different. It sounds different. And I think it has tremendous opportunity to help us manage our forests, whether they're government forests and we're doing restoration work or private forests, and we're doing it for wood production to become better at what we do and be better stewards of the land. And, really show the public that, these forests can be managed in a sound, sustainable, ecological manner with a low footprint and provide products for society, whether those products are water out of the Rockies or lumber or habitat and do it in a sustained, actively managed model, which will help us as foresters maybe regain some of the public's trust in what we do and the fact that we know how to manage lands and take care of the landscape. So, we don't, we can have less of these catastrophic wildfire events, and we all lose the things that we value. When those happen and build upon that trust that we need to rebuild with society. And I think these systems, speaking as a Forester, cause I'm not a logger, we're Foresters with cool tools is what I like to say, and I think we can do this in a manner such that, maybe we as a society can get back to looking at what we do is actually a profession and as respected, educated individuals that, that are trusted like your doctor, right? We're just like forestry doctors. We can do this stuff. We can make this happen. We can have our cake and eat it too, if we do it properly. And I think these are a way to do that. We have to change. We have to change the narrative of how we do things. We can't keep doing things the way we've always done it because, we found out that's just not working very well. So, I have a lot of faith in this stuff. And as the technology changes and evolves, it's going to get even better. Where we're at today is not where we were at when I started in 2010. And I think you go down the road, 10 more years, it's going to look nothing like what we're doing now. It's, it's going to get better. So, a lot of positive encouragement here is that the, how the technology is going to help us achieve society's goals for forested lands.

Jacob Putney: Well, Matt thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us today. These systems are incredible. I'm always fascinated by the amount of technology they have and what they're capable of doing. Being more efficient and just being safer and having that lesser effect on the landscape. I think it provides a lot of opportunity to accomplish really cool objectives that are needed. And as you said, a lot of positive outlooks, I think, for how we manage and how we approach things moving forward. So, if any questions came up while you were listening today or if you'd like to learn more, please drop us a comment or send us a message on our website. And we'll be sure to get some of these resources and some photos of these cool machines posted as well.

Lightning Round: Fun Questions with Matt

Jacob Putney: But before we wrap up, we conclude each of our episodes with what we call our lightning round or a few questions that we ask each of our guests. So, Matt let's start with the first question. What is your favorite tree?

Matt Mattiota: Well, my favorite tree is Western Larch. And I love the Larch tree because it's got the strength of Douglas fir and the beauty of Aspen, right? You get the nice color in the fall, the beautiful yellow, but you get that high quality, high strength of Douglas fir. So, it's like a perfect combination of beauty and strength. That's why I like Western Larch.

Jacob Putney: No, I've never heard that comparison before, but you're right. That's a, that is a good one. The second question here is, so what is the most interesting thing you bring with you in the field?

Matt Mattiota: Well, when I go to the field and get to wear your PPE, right. You gotta have a hard hat when you're going on active operation. And I bought a hard hat when I graduated from Oregon state in June of 1995. They don't even make these things anymore. They're aluminum hard hats. The old tin hard hat it's fluorescent red, but I've had that since I graduated school, and it goes with me wherever I go all since then. So, it's kind of like a, I can continue my career through my whole career with the same hard hat. I survived working in the woods, my whole career and the hard hat survives, and it'll be mission accomplished.

Jacob Putney: You still wear it out in the woods.

Matt Mattiota: Absolutely. It's almost like we're in an antique. It's not dented, so I still meet OSHA requirements. It's all messed up. But yeah, it goes with me.

Jacob Putney: I can't believe you've had it this long and that doesn't have any dents in it.

Matt Mattiota: No, I mean, there's one little bitty one, but nothing to speak of. Right. So, try not to get hit by things.

Jacob Putney: That's always good. Yes. Yeah, no, that's really cool. And then lastly, is there any other resources that you would recommend to our listeners who is interested in learning more about all of these things related to cut the length systems or tethered assist systems or some of the projects that you've worked on?

Matt Mattiota: Yeah. So, I would say. There’re some websites out there that are worth going to check out. Companies that make this cut-to-length systems, there's actually three, three big ones. Ponsse, John Deere, and Komatsu are the three big ones in cut to length. And then there's a fourth one Rodney, which is much, much smaller, but the big three so there's good information there... Millertimber.com has some pictures on there of equipment, some YouTube links Yeah that's a good place to start.

Jacob Putney: Thank you again, Matt, so much for being here today.

Conclusion and Resources

Jacob Putney: Like I said, I've always been fascinated by this technology and I'm excited to see how it's going to continue to evolve over time. So, if anyone hasn't had a chance to see these types of machines firsthand, I would highly recommend it. So, check out those websites. And like I said, we'll get some pictures of them on our website, as well. This concludes another episode of in the woods. Thank you all so much for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and we will see you all next time. Bye everyone.

Lauren Grand: The In the Woods podcast is produced by Lauren Grand, Jacob Putney, and Scott Levengood, who are all members of the Oregon State University Forestry and Natural Resources Extension team. Other members of the team who've been involved in the podcast include Carrie Berger, Jason O'Brien, and Stephen Fitzgerald. Episodes are edited and produced by Carrie Cantrell. Music for In the Woods was composed by Jeffrey Hino, and graphic design was created by Christina Friedhauf. Funding for In the Woods Is provided by Oregon State University, Forestry and Natural Resources Extension, the Oregon Forest Resources Institute, and the USDA Renewable Resources Extension Act funding. We hope you enjoyed the episode, and we can't wait to talk to you again next month. Until then, what's in your woods?